I'm not sure what the "technical" reason for it is, but AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) lost my buddy list again. There was a period of time about two years ago where this was happening on a semi-weekly basis. In fact, I'm not the only one I know who has been afflicted by this.
Fortunately intelligent AIM client authors have features for this very predicament. I use GAIM (Gnome AIM) in Linux. It has quite a few features and works very well. Gaim saves my buddy list and then when it dissappears from AOL, my buddies are "automagically" reloaded onto the server.
This is all well and good, but it depends on me using Gaim. When I'm out and about I often use AIM Express--a Java applet provided by AOL. Of course if my buddy list disappears (like it did last week) and I don't remember to re-launch Gaim when I'm at home, then tough beans until I get a chance.
Posted by enigma at January 28, 2004 03:05 PM